NHS Capital Spending

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Western. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean) on securing such an important debate.

The No. 1 issue that I promised during my election campaign that I would focus on and prioritise, if elected, was care in the NHS, specifically Musgrove Park hospital and the dire state of the maternity unit. Of course, the Conservatives did not just promise to help; they promised 40 entirely new hospitals, including one in Taunton. As has been pointed out, there were not 40 of them, many of them were not hospitals and they certainly were not new. According to data from the House of Commons Library, as my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington pointed out, a staggering £4.3 billion of NHS capital spending was cut to cover revenue challenges under the last Conservative Government. It is hardly surprising that their enormous promise turned out to be entirely fictious.

What is the result? In the summer, we have medical staff fainting in the 30° heat in single-storey buildings that were built in world war two, and in the winter, we have holes in the walls and rows of buckets in corridors to catch the water. We even have roof guttering mounted inside the building in several locations to deal with the leaks. I trained as an architect and I was not expecting to see external roof guttering inside hospital rooms.

I genuinely welcome the Government’s increased capital spending for the NHS. Last year, as a result of cross-party campaigns and to the Government’s credit, Taunton and Somerset got a glass-half-full announcement about the hospital programme: it was included in the second wave of funding. Unfortunately that is not until 2033, which is later than is needed. We need action before that. I was delighted to hear the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care being challenged on the radio recently by the redoubtable Emma Britton, the voice of BBC Somerset. He said of the new maternity unit:

“If I can bring forward the timetables of these schemes because we can get not just the money, but the contractors and the suppliers and everything else that is required—the planning to do that—we will do our best to bring forward schemes."

I am working closely with the trust. They have sensible plans that could expedite those projects and get on with the vital planning work that we know needs to happen so far ahead of the project. That could be started next year. Can the Minister meet with me at some point to look realistically at the trust’s proposals to expedite the vital need for a maternity unit in Musgrove Park hospital in Taunton? A meeting was proposed earlier in the year, but got postponed.

I understand the pressure the Minister is under. I know she understands the challenges and has many hospitals to think about, and I genuinely appreciate the work that she is doing. But, given what the Secretary of State told Somerset over the airwaves only a few weeks ago, and given the dire need at Musgrove Park hospital, I urge the Government to make a start on that key project as soon as possible. We know that care and our NHS are the key levers to getting our public services back to where they need to be, to helping people back to work and to boosting our economy. We also know it is the right thing to do for mums and medical staff in Taunton and Wellington.